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New York Times headline: FINE JAPANESE ART OF MAKING FAKE FOOD. Actually this is legal, valuable to the food industry, and recognized not only as pop-culture but as art! There have been art gallery exhibits of the fake food. To clarify, there is a widespread practice in Japan of providing plastic representations of the food …

The E. coli long-term evolution experiment, or LTEE for short, is approaching its 30th birthday, which will be on February 24th, 2018. In honor of all the people who have worked on this project, I thought it would be neat to commission a special, but shareable, piece of art. Given the history of science and …

With all due respect—and, admittedly, it’s not much—to Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence, theatre and the arts are not supposed to be safe. That’s missing the entire point of the arts. The difference between a summer beach read (think: a Harlequin romance) and a compelling novel (think: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me”, …

As a member of the Cultural Engagement Council at MSU, I’ve been thinking about how we might create a more coherent and integrated arts and cultural experience for students at the university. Drawing on my experience with badging and micro credentialing at Penn State, what follows is a discussion of badges, an example of how …

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I wake up every day just feeling incredibly lucky for what I have – and to have a special day devoted to celebrating that idea… how very cool. So here are two new and unique ambigram designs to celebrate this wonderful day. The first is a free standing rotational ambigram and the …

After I had posted my “Paris, City of Love” design on FB, my friend Pilar Quezzaire posted on my wall the following question: What about Beirut and Nairobi, Punya? Can you make one for them as well? In another posting she linked to the website http://www.warsintheworld.com/ and a quick glance through it shows just how much conflict …

Paris has been on my mind for the last 24 hours (as it has been for many others around the world). I have been lucky to have had the opportunity to spend some time in the city – and Paris is one of my favorite places in the world. Paris, anyway you look at it (a new 180 …

That title is not a mistake. When I read the recent articles about the earliest example of a decapitation, my first thought was “wow, look at those illustrations; we really need to teach archaeologists to do this more”. Maybe it is because I get to read articles about decapitation fairly frequently, maybe I’m jaded- but …

Over the past two years Gaurav Bhatnagar and I have written five columns for the Math education journal At Right Angles on the topics of mathematics and visual wordplay, specifically Ambigrams. In this five articles we have explored everything from symmetry to self-similarity, fractals to paradoxes. I have posted these articles on this website as they have been …

The Zentrum für Politische Schönheit is, by far, one of the most visible groups doing performance work with high media impact. This summer, as a tribute to those who die crossing the Mediterranean hoping to reach Europe, they dug up the grass on the lawn in front of the Bundeskanzleramt (the Office of the Federal …

The summer of 2015, there were 133 students and instructors in the hybrid and overseas components of the MAET program. These people were spread out across three locations: East Lansing, MI (with 2 cohorts, Yr1 and 2 of MAET); Chicago, IL (with 2 cohorts of the MSUrbanSTEM program) and Galway, Ireland (with 3 cohorts, Yr1, 2 & …

A few months ago I had posted about publication of the first of two articles on mathematics, visual wordplay and paradoxes. The second article (part of our series on Art and Math co-authored with my friend Gaurav Bhatnagar and published by At Right Angles) is now available. You can download all of the articles in the series Of Art & Math by following the links below …

I saw this video at one of the Scifoo sessions on drones. Beautiful stuff! I find this much more pleasing than fireworks. The amount of waste and debris generated by a big fireworks display is horrendous. Tweet

The Pedvale Open Air Art Museum lies in a magnetic field. The magnetic force lines of this field interact with the large granite and iron sculptures to create some unusual magnetic effects. The lifting ring on my sculpture, Sekimori Ishi attracts the north pole of a magnetic compass. On the other side of the park, …

This is a proposal for a new site for public sculpture in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The proposed sculpture trail will be entirely on land owned by the city of Grand Rapids, bounded on the east by Kalamazoo Avenue, the north by Plaster Creek, the west by Ken-O-Sha Park, and the south by 32nd Street SE. …

I have always loved paradoxes so it is with great pleasure that the fourth article in our series on Art and Math (co-authored with my friend Gaurav Bhatnagar and published by At Right Angles) focuses on paradoxes and visual wordplay. It was great fun coming up with a range of designs on this topic — in fact we had …

I have been creating ambigrams for years now… and I feel extremely lucky that what started as a personal interest and passion has led to some wonderful experiences and learning. These include a series of articles on the mathematics behind these visual designs and now an exhibition at the MSU Museum. Since December the Creativity-Art-Science Gallery at the …

We recently acquired a stack of original comic art from Muthu Comics in India. Painted on cardstock with tempera, these colorful images were used as cover art for reprints of Western comics (you can see the comic next to the original in the last photo). The paintings had been covered in cellophane which was taped …

My first real research study was one that I conducted back when I was a graduate student under the mentorship of Bill Brewer. It was designed as a classic educational psychology memory study and though I have done little along those lines recently, it is a study that I am quite proud of. For one …

Christmas Eve one year ago was a much different situation for weather conditions as compared to this one. At the time, I was on day three of no power at the home, sleeping nightly by the fire. It was certainly a Christmas I won’t be forgetting any time soon. Taken with an iPhone 4. Tweet

Tannic acid patination is an ancient technique for forming a dark protective coating on iron objects. It may have been discovered accidentally, after iron objects were lost or buried in peat bogs, then recovered later in an unrusted condition. Iron Age bog bodies have been found with intact iron blades, more than a thousand years …

The drive to Alaska is a long one. This was the second time I had done it; the first from Michigan and the second from Wisconsin. This time it was with my good friend Drew. We made it in unbelievable time. We had to, we were on a deadline. That couldn’t stop us from catching …

Well, I’m back. It is much harder to stay on top of this blog than I thought during busy times of the semester. There is a week and a half until my grades are submitted and hopefully I am a little less busy. I do have a lot of articles saved up to share, though, …

Last week I watched an old BBC documentary about Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting “The Death of Marat.” (Since this puts us in late 18th century France, it will help if you silently pronounce David as Dah-VEED and Marat as Mah-RAH throughout the rest of this blog.) Simon Schama was prattling on about how Marat was …

For the 4th year running, our weed science team had a pumpkin carving contest to celebrate Halloween. Pumpkins were displayed on Oct. 31 in the Plant and Soil Sciences Building, where anyone was allowed to vote for their favorite. This year’s winning pumpkin belonged to graduate student Victoria Ackroyd. Congratulations on an awesome design! 2014 …

Paper wasps build nests using fibers to form a paper like substance. Inside, they look like this: I made some foam and paper sprues and attached them to the nest fragments with masking tape: These were packed in loose sand (shake gently while doing this). Them moltnm aluminum was poured in the sprues. This is …

I had gotten off the plane a few minutes before from a couple long flights back to Michigan from the Great White North up in Alaska. Of course we had been packed into the plane, which really isn’t too bad on a regular shorter flight, but the lack of leg room at my height adds …

I love creating ambigrams, words written in such a manner that they can be read from multiple perspective – rotated, reflected and so on. These designs are much easier to “grasp” when printed on paper since you can actually turn the paper around, hold it against a mirror or hold it against the light while …

In celebration of International Literacy Day, here is a new ambigram design – it reads, “Literacy” one way and “Reading” the other! Enjoy. See below for an attempt to use CSS to use to make the rotation automatic when you move your cursor over the image. Check it out. I think it is pretty cool. …

I’m a sucker for pure, raw talent. That’s why I love seeing buskers on my travels. In my business, we do so much “in post” that it is always refreshing to see creative folks finding other ways to make it sound good, to do it all themselves, and to showcase their pure, raw talent. Taken …

September 5 is Teacher’s Day in India. It is celebrated on the birthdate of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian philosopher and statesman who was also the first Vice-President and the second President of India. He famously said, “teachers should be the best minds in the country.” To celebrate this day, here are three new ambigram designs (see image below). …

We dropped off my eldest at the University of Michigan today. He begins the next stage of his life. We couldn’t be more excited. Here is a new ambigram design to mark this occasion. Soham whichever way you look at it, with UMich colors! Enjoy. Tweet

Picasso famously said, “Art is a lie that tells the truth.” This design below is my attempt to represent this quote – at least the first part of the quote. Move your mouse over the image to see a change… You can see the combined image below Of course, as most things go, it is …

Vijay Iyer, (http://vijay-iyer.com/) is an Indian-American jazz pianist and composer. He is a MacArthur Genius grant winner and is currently Franklin and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University and is widely regarded as being one of the most innovative composers and musicians today. His music transcends national boundaries through creatively bringing together traditional …

This summer over 120 educators met in three different locations both here in the US and overseas, as a part of the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program hybrid classes. The video below, visualizing a quote by Steve Jobs, was created by all of us – one word at a time! The students …

Self-similarity in geometry is the idea of repeating a similar shape (often at a different scale) over and over again. In other words, a self-similar image contains copies of itself at smaller and smaller scales, such as the image below of the word “zoom.” Self-similarity is a rich mathematical idea and connects to other powerful concepts such …

I love it when I find something to share that combines science with art. For those of you who don’t know what is special about caddisflies, their larvae, which are aquatic, build cocoons for protection using a silk produced by their salivary glands, and any pebbles, twigs, or other debris they can find on the …

A search on YouTube reveals a wide range of videos related to TPACK. Most of them are serious descriptions of the framework (heck, I have created a few of those myself). But there is a smaller genre of TPACK videos that don’t necessarily seek to explain the construct. They are just good fun.There are songs and skits …

The Art of Deception: Illusions to Challenge the Eye and the Mind is a new book edited by Brad Honeycutt. Brad is a graduate of Michigan State (Go Spartans!) and maintains a blog (anopticalillusion) devoted to optical illusions. A few of my designs have ended up on his site (see here for previous mentions of Brad on this …

Camera traps have been very useful for studying rare mammals on the ground, but until recently, no one had thought to put them up in trees, in the canopy of the rainforest. In Peru, where rainforest was recently cleared to install a natural gas pipeline, a Smithsonian scientist thought it would be neat to put …

I have a new candidate for coolest research institute architecture. HKUST’s Institute for Advanced Study is housed in an amazing building with a view of Clearwater Bay in HK. The members of the institute will be mostly theoretical physicists and mathematicians :-) Stiff competition from Benasque’s Center and the Perimeter Institute, however. Also Caltech’s IQIM! …

This sculpture was inspired by a trip to the Morton Arboretum, where I saw a sekimori ishi. T was intrigued by a symbol that meant “don’t go here”, which also included a convenient handle, that that could be used to move it out of the way. The next step was to recreate the form. I …

My sculpture was based on the traditional Japanese sekimori ishi. Here is a photo of one in use in a Japanese garden. I am interested in visual symbols, particularly ones that may convey multiple meanings. Sekimori ishi means boundary guard stone. It tells you that a path is closed, but also provdes a convenient handle …

My plans changed a bit from the initial proposal, which was to cast iron directly around the granite. See my previous post about cultural resource management, and choosing the stone. I could not have completed this sculpture without the help of my assistants, Sutton Demlong and Justin Playl. Both were highly recommended by Tamsie …